“The Dark Lord,” he said, raising his glass and draining it.
The sisters copied him. Snape refilled their glasses. As Narcissa took her second drink she said in a rush, “Severus, I’m sorry to come here like this, but I had to see you. I think you are the only one who can help me —”
Snape held up a hand to stop her, then pointed his wand again at the concealed staircase door. There was a loud bang and a squeal, followed by the sound of Wormtail scurrying back up the stairs.
“My apologies,” said Snape. “He has lately taken to listening at doors, I don’t know what he means by it. . . . You were saying, Narcissa?”
She took a great, shuddering breath and started again.
“Severus, I know I ought not to be here, I have been told to say nothing to anyone, but —”
“Then you ought to hold your tongue!” snarled Bellatrix. “Particularly in present company!”
“‘Present company’?” repeated Snape sardonically. “And what am I to understand by that, Bellatrix?”
“That I don’t trust you, Snape, as you very well know!”
Narcissa let out a noise that might have been a dry sob and covered her face with her hands. Snape set his glass down upon the table and sat back again, his hands upon the arms of his chair, smiling into Bellatrix’s glowering face.
“Narcissa, I think we ought to hear what Bellatrix is bursting to say; it will save tedious interruptions. Well, continue, Bellatrix,” said Snape. “Why is it that you do not trust me?”
“A hundred reasons!” she said loudly, striding out from behind the sofa to slam her glass upon the table. “Where to start! Where were you when the Dark Lord fell? Why did you never make any attempt to find him when he vanished? What have you been doing all these years that you’ve lived in Dumbledore’s pocket? Why did you stop the Dark Lord procuring the Sorcerer’s Stone? Why did you not return at once when the Dark Lord was reborn? Where were you a few weeks ago when we battled to retrieve the prophecy for the Dark Lord? And why, Snape, is Harry Potter still alive, when you have had him at your mercy for five years?”
She paused, her chest rising and falling rapidly, the color high in her cheeks. Behind her, Narcissa sat motionless, her face still hidden in her hands.
Snape smiled.
“Before I answer you — oh yes, Bellatrix, I am going to answer! You can carry my words back to the others who whisper behind my back, and carry false tales of my treachery to the Dark Lord! Before I answer you, I say, let me ask a question in turn. Do you really think that the Dark Lord has not asked me each and every one of those questions? And do you really think that, had I not been able to give satisfactory answers, I would be sitting here talking to you?”
She hesitated.
“I know he believes you, but . . .”
“You think he is mistaken? Or that I have somehow hoodwinked him? Fooled the Dark Lord, the greatest wizard, the most accomplished Legilimens the world has ever seen?”
Bellatrix said nothing, but looked, for the first time, a little discomfited. Snape did not press the point. He picked up his drink again, sipped it, and continued, “You ask where I was when the Dark Lord fell. I was where he had ordered me to be, at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, because he wished me to spy upon Albus Dumbledore. You know, I presume, that it was on the Dark Lord’s orders that I took up the post?”
She nodded almost imperceptibly and then opened her mouth, but Snape forestalled her.
“You ask why I did not attempt to find him when he vanished. For the same reason that Avery, Yaxley, the Carrows, Greyback, Lucius” — he inclined his head slightly to Narcissa — “and many others did not attempt to find him. I believed him finished. I am not proud of it, I was wrong, but there it is. . . . If he had not forgiven we who lost faith at that time, he would have very few followers left.”
“He’d have me!” said Bellatrix passionately. “I, who spent many years in Azkaban for him!”
“Yes, indeed, most admirable,” said Snape in a bored voice. “Of course, you weren’t a lot of use to him in prison, but the gesture was undoubtedly fine —”
“Gesture!” she shrieked; in her fury she looked slightly mad. “While I endured the dementors, you remained at Hogwarts, comfortably playing Dumbledore’s pet!”
“Not quite,” said Snape calmly. “He wouldn’t give me the Defense Against the Dark Arts job, you know. Seemed to think it might, ah, bring about a relapse . . . tempt me into my old ways.”
“This was your sacrifice for the Dark Lord, not to teach your favorite subject?” she jeered. “Why did you stay there all that time, Snape? Still spying on Dumbledore for a master you believed dead?”
“Hardly,” said Snape, “although the Dark Lord is pleased that I never deserted my post: I had sixteen years of information on Dumbledore to give him when he returned, a rather more useful welcome-back present than endless reminiscences of how unpleasant Azkaban is. . . .”
“But you stayed —”